Ginger reporting for school bullying duty. This crap happens, whether we like it or not. Affirmative action for socio-economic reasons, yes... which will more-often-than-not go along racial lines. If you're from a 'disadvantaged' group (Aboriginal, African American, whatever), then you're going to have less opportunities to advance yourself, and that will carry on to your children. Affirmative action at least tries to even this out. Naturally, you want the best candidate for whatever role is needed. I'm a bit torn; I certainly see the benefit, though.
My tuppence on the matter:
I was talking not so long ago to a man who was involved with admissions for Oxford University, almost universally regarded as one of the world's top five institutions for higher education. He said that in their admissions they do use a form of affirmative action; if they had two candidates whom they could not seperate except by the fact that one had gone to a grammar school in Cheltenham (foreigners: a
very rich town indeed) and one had been to Hovel Road Comprehensive in Peckham (foreigners: don't go there, you'll get stabbed), they will pick the one from Peckham. Their logic, which I think is a good one, was that if you can achieve as much with a poor education as the next man can with a very good one, you clearly have far more natural ability and so will probably be a better student for the university. Furthermore, he said, they have a target of about 70% of their students coming from state schools, but said that considering how 90% of pupils attend them, they weren't going to lower their admissions standards but simply encourage state school pupils to get the application in. That's positive discrimination as a good thing.
Now as for its use in the wider world: I think we have to remember that a few decades ago people
genuinely believed that all black people were less intelligent than all white people, no women could ever do a decent job in management, homosexuals were of lower moral character, and so on. Originally, positive discrimination forced people to witness that actually they could, and so then it was a good thing. Nowadays, however, almost nobody genuinely holds these views and as such it is outdated, and causes far more anger when misapplied than it does good when applied 'correctly'. I still stand by the university's approach, however, just not 'let's make 50% of MPs women, because women are 50% of the population' - no, let's just make the MPs we have the best people for the job regardless of their sex. Positive discrimination is a poor substitute for colour blindness.
wages of everyone was increasing more quickly before AA started. If it's affirmative action's fault, then AA caused all wage stagnation of the past 30 years.
more rather to make it while black, you have to really make it. The slums and ghettos of America are filled with brilliant people held back by too many things. One in particular is poor health, which will slow or stop even the most driven. Just being black correlates to having PTSD in America. PTSD is a disability... one could have the perspective it's amazing black people believe in themselves enough to keep trying, and keep succeeding
